The Inner Nature of Music and the Experience of Tone

Schmidt Number: S-5199

On-line since: 15th March 2005

VII

Recently,
I have called attention repeatedly to the fact that, just as one can
give a biographical description of man's waking life, so one
could offer one of the time spent during sleep. Everything the
human being experiences during his waking hours is experienced
through his physical and etheric bodies. By virtue of the
appropriately developed sense organs in the physical and etheric
bodies he is conscious of this world, which, as his environment, is
related to the physical and etheric bodies; it is at one with them,
so to speak. Since man at his present level of evolution has not
similarly developed soul-spiritual organs in his astral body and “I”
that would serve as super-sensible sense organs — to coin a
paradoxical expression — he cannot bring his consciousness into
what he experiences between falling asleep and awakening. Only
spiritual vision, therefore, could survey that which would be
contained in the biography of this “I” and astral body,
which runs parallel to the biography that we come to with the help of
the physical and the etheric bodies.

If
one speaks of man's waking experiences, they necessarily
include what, together with him and caused by him, takes place in his
physical-etheric environment. One therefore must speak of a
physical-etheric environment or world in which man exists during this
waking life. Likewise, man is in another world during sleep; this
world, however, is totally different from the physical-etheric world.
Just as the physical world is our environment when we are awake, so
super-sensible vision is in a position to speak of a world that
surrounds us similarly when we sleep. In this lecture we shall bring
before our souls some of the aspects that can illuminate that world.
The basic elements for it are described in my book,
An Outline Of Occult Science.
[Rudolf Steiner,
An Outline Of Occult Science,
Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, N.Y., 1972.]
There you will find described in a certain way, though in a sketchy
form, how the realms of the physical-etheric world — the
mineral, plant, animal, and human realms — continue upward into
the realms of the higher hierarchies. We shall now take a closer look
at this.

When
in the waking state, we turn our eyes or other sense organs in the
direction of our physical-etheric environment, we perceive the three,
or four, realms of nature, namely, the mineral, plant, animal, and
human realms. Ascending to those regions that are accessible only to
super-sensible consciousness, we find a continuation, as it were, of
these realms: the realms of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai,
Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and so forth (see following diagram.)

We
therefore have two worlds interpenetrating one another, the
physical-etheric world and the super-sensible world. We already know
that during sleep we are indeed in this super-sensible world and have
experiences there, despite the fact that, due to the absence of
soul-spiritual organs, these experiences do not reach ordinary
consciousness.

To
arrive at a more specific comprehension of what the human being
experiences in this super-sensible world, one must describe this world
in the same way as one describes the physical-etheric world by means
of natural science and history. Regarding the super-sensible science
that concerns the actual course of events in the world in which we
exist as sleeping human beings, we naturally must select particular
details to begin with. Today, I shall select one event of profound
significance for the whole evolution of humanity in the last few
thousand years. We have already discussed this event repeatedly from
the viewpoint of the physical-etheric world and its history. Today,
we shall discuss it from another viewpoint, that of the super-sensible
world. The event to which I refer is one that falls in the fourth
century A.D.

I
have described how the whole composition of human souls in the West
becomes different in that century. Without spiritual scientific insight
into this matter, one actually no longer understands how human beings
sensed and felt before the fourth century A.D.
We have frequently described, however, this composition of soul, this
feeling. We have described in different words what human beings
experienced in the course of that age. Now we shall take a brief
glance at what the beings who belong to the super-sensible realm
experienced during that same time. We shall turn to the other side of
life, as it were, and take the viewpoint of the super-sensible realm.

It
is a prejudice of contemporary, so-called enlightened human beings to
believe that their thoughts are confined only to their heads. We
would discover nothing of the things around us through thoughts if
these thoughts were only within the heads of man. He who believes
that thoughts are only in the human head is as prejudiced as one —
paradoxical as this might sound — who believes that the drink
of water with which he quenches his thirst originated on his tongue
instead of flowing into his mouth from the glass of water. It is as
ridiculous to claim that thoughts originate in the human head as it
is to claim that the drink of water originates in the mouth. Indeed,
thoughts are spread out all through the world. Thoughts are forces
that dwell in all things. Our organ of thinking is simply something
that partakes of the cosmic reservoir of thought forces, absorbing
thoughts of itself. We therefore cannot speak of thoughts as if they
were the possession only of the human being. Instead, we must be
aware that thoughts are world-dominating forces, spread out
everywhere in the cosmos. These thoughts, however, do not freely
float about, as it were, but are always borne and worked upon by some
beings; and, most important, they are not always borne by the same
beings.

When
we make use of the super-sensible world, we find through super-sensible
research that, up into the fourth century A.D.,
the thoughts with which human beings made the world comprehensible to
themselves were borne outside in the cosmos (I could also say, “they
flowed out” — our earthly terms are ill-suited for these
sublime occurrences and states of being), that these thoughts were
borne or flowed from those hierarchical beings that we designate as
the Exusiai or beings of form (see following diagram).

If,
out of the science of the mysteries, an ancient Greek wished to give
an account of how he actually had acquired his thoughts, he would
have had to do it in the following way. He would have said, “I
turn my spiritual sight up toward those beings who, through the
science of the mysteries, have been revealed to me as the beings of
form, the forces or beings of form. They are the bearers of cosmic
intelligence, they are the bearers of cosmic thoughts. They let
thoughts stream through all the world events, and they bestow these
human thoughts upon the world so that it can experience them
consciously.” A person who, through a special initiation, had
gained access to the super-sensible world in those ancient Greek times
and had come to experience and behold these form beings, would, in
order to form a correct picture, a true imagination of them, have had
to attribute to them the thoughts that stream and radiate through the
world. As an ancient Greek he beheld how, from their limbs, as it
were, these form beings let stream forth radiant thought forces which
then entered the world processes and there continued to be effective
as the world-creative powers of intelligence.

Diagram 10Click image for large view

He
thus could say that in the cosmos, the universe, the Exusiai, the
forces of form, have the task of pouring thoughts into all the world
processes. A material science describes human deeds by noting what
people do individually or together. In focusing on the activity of
the form forces of that particular age, a super-sensible science would
have to describe how these super-sensible beings let the thought
forces stream from one to the other, how they received them from one
another, and how, in this streaming and receiving, the world
processes are incorporated that appear outwardly to man as natural
phenomena.

The evolution
of humanity now approached the fourth century A.D.
In the super-sensible world, thought brought about an extremely
significant event; namely, the Exusiai — the forces or beings
of form — gave their thought forces up to the Archai, to the
primal forces or primal beginnings. (See diagram above) The primal
beginnings, or Archai, took over the task formerly executed by the
Exusiai. Such things happen in the super-sensible world. This was a
particularly sublime and significant cosmic event. From that time on,
the Exusiai, the form beings, retained only the task of regulating
the outer sense perceptions, therefore ruling with the particular
cosmic forces over everything existing in the world of colors, tones,
and so forth. Concerning the age that now dawned after the fourth
century A.D. a person who can discern
these matters must say that he beholds how the world-dominating
thoughts are passed on to the Archai, the primal beginnings, how what
eyes see and what ears hear, the manifold world phenomena engaged in
perpetual metamorphosis, are the tapestry woven by the Exusiai. They
formerly bestowed the thoughts on human beings; they now give human
beings their sense impressions, while the primal beginnings bestow
the thoughts on human beings.

This
fact of the super-sensible world was mirrored below in the sense
world. In the ancient age in which lived the Greek, for example,
thoughts were objectively perceived in all things. Just as today we
believe that we perceive the color red or blue streaming forth from
an object, so the ancient Greek found not only that he grasped a
thought with his brain but that the thought streamed forth out of the
things, just as red or blue streams forth. In my book,
The Riddles of Philosophy,
[Rudolf Steiner,
The Riddles of Philosophy,
Anthroposophic press, Spring Valley, N.Y., 1973.]
I have described the human side, so to speak, of the matter, how this
important process of the super-sensible world is reflected in the
physical-sensible world. There, I employed philosophical expressions,
because philosophical terminology is a language for the material
world. When one discusses the matter from the viewpoint of the
super-sensible world, however, one must speak of the super-sensible
fact that the task of the Exusiai passed on to the Archai.

Such things
are prepared in humanity through whole epochs of time and are connected
with fundamental changes in human souls. I said that this super-sensible
event took place in the fourth century A.D.,
but this is only an approximation, a mean point in time, as it were.
This transference of a spiritual task took place over a long period
of time. It had been prepared already in pre-Christian times and was
completed only in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries
A.D. The fourth century is just the mean
century, which is mentioned so as to pinpoint something definite in
the historical development of humanity.

This
is also the point of time in humanity's evolution when the view
of the super-sensible world began to vanish completely for man. The
consciousness of the soul ceased to see supersensibly, to perceive,
because this human soul surrendered itself to the earth. You perhaps
will understand this more clearly if we shed light on it from yet
another angle.

What
is really implied here? What am I trying to point out so intensely?
It is the fact that human beings feel themselves more and more in
their individuality. As the world of thoughts passes from the form
beings to the primal beginnings, from the Exusiai to the Archai, man
increasingly senses the thoughts in his own being, because the Archai
live one level nearer man than the Exusiai. Now, when man begins to
see supersensibly, he has the following impression. He realizes that
this [see diagram] is the world that he perceives as the sense world.
One side [yellow in diagram] is turned toward his senses, the other
[red] is already hidden from the senses. Ordinary consciousness knows
nothing of the relationships that are to be considered here.
Supersensible consciousness, on the other hand, has the impression
that between man [see diagram] and the sense impressions there are
the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai; they are really on this side of
the sense world. Though one does not see them with ordinary eyes,
they actually are situated between man and the whole tapestry of
sense impressions. The Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes are actually
located beyond this realm; they are concealed by the tapestry of
sense impressions.

Diagram 11Click image for large view

A
human being having super-sensible consciousness senses that the
thoughts are coming closer to him since having been given over to the
Archai. He senses them as being located more in his world, whereas
formerly they were located behind the appearance of things; they
approached man, as it were, through the red or blue color, or the
tone of c-sharp or g. Since this transference of thoughts, man feels
a freer association with the world of thoughts. This also gives rise
to the illusion that man himself produces the thoughts.

In
the course of time, the human being evolved to the point where he
could enclose in himself, as it were, what formerly offered itself to
him as objective outer world. This came about only gradually in human
evolution. Going back into the distant past of human evolution, to
the ancient Atlantean time preceding the Atlantean catastrophe,
picture to yourselves the human configuration at that time, as
described in my books,
An Outline Of Occult Science
or
Cosmic Memory.
[Rudolf Steiner,
Cosmic Memory,
Harper & Rowe, New York, 1981.] As you know, human beings of that
time were formed completely differently. The substance of their
bodies was more delicate than it became later in the post-Atlantean
age. For this reason, the soul element also stood in a different
relationship to the world — all this is described in the above
books — and these Atlanteans experienced the world completely
differently. I just wish to point out one aspect of their particular
kind of experience. Atlanteans could not yet experience musical
intervals of thirds, not even fifths. Their musical experience really
began with feeling the sevenths. They then felt further intervals, of
which the seventh was the smallest. They missed hearing thirds and
fifths; these intervals did not exist for Atlanteans.

The
experience of tone structure was completely different, and the soul
had a completely different relationship to the tone structure. One
who lives musically only in sevenths, with no intervals in between,
as naturally as did the Atlanteans does not even perceive the musical
element as something that occurs around or within him. The moment he
perceives the musical element he feels transported out of his body
into the cosmos. This was the case with the Atlanteans. Their musical
experience converged with a direct religious experience. Their
experience of the seventh did not make them feel that they themselves
had something to do with the appearance of the interval of the
seventh. Instead, they sensed how the gods, who pervaded and wove
through the world, revealed themselves in sevenths. The statement, “I
make music,” would have made no sense to them. The only
meaningful thing for them to say was, “I live in music made by
the gods.”

In
a much diminished form, this musical experience still existed in the
post-Atlantean age during the period when people lived mainly in the
interval of the fifth. This must not be compared to man's
present-day feeling for the fifth. Today, the fifth gives man an
impression of being something external that lacks content. Man
experiences something empty in the fifth, though in a positive sense
of the word empty. The fifth has become empty because the gods have
withdrawn from human beings.

Still,
in the post-Atlantean age too, man experienced in the internal of the
fifth that the gods actually lived in these fifths. Only later, when
the third appeared in the musical element — both major and
minor thirds — the musical element submerged itself, as it
were, into human feeling [Gemüt]; hence, man no longer
felt transported from his body while experiencing music. Man was
definitely transported in musical life during the true era of the
fifth. In the era of thirds, however, which as you know dawned only
relatively recently, man is within himself when he experiences music.
He brings the musical element close to his corporeality. He
interweaves it with his corporeality. Along with the experience of
the third, therefore, the difference between major and minor keys
arises. Man becomes aware of what can be experienced through the
major key on the one hand and the minor key on the other. With the
third and the appearance of major and minor keys, the musical
experience now links itself with uplifting, joyous human moods and
with depressed, sad moods, which the human being experiences as a
bearer of his physical and etheric bodies. In a manner of speaking,
man withdraws his experiences as a bearer of his physical and etheric
bodies. In a manner of speaking, man withdraws his experience of the
world from the cosmos and unites it with himself. Formerly, his most
important experience of the world was such — this was
definitely still the case in the “fifth-era,” if I may
put it like this, but much more so in the “seventh-era” —
that it directly transported him, that he could say, “The world
of tones draws my ‘I’ and my astral body out of my
physical and etheric bodies. I interweave my earthly existence with
the divine-spiritual world, and, on the wings of the tone structure,
the gods move through the world. I participate in their moving when I
perceive the tones.”

In
this specific area you can see how cosmic experience draws near to
man, as it were; how the cosmos penetrates man; how, when we go back
to earlier ages, we must seek in the super-sensible for the most
important human experiences; and how the age is approaching when man
as an earthly sense phenomenon must be taken along, as it were, when
the most important world events are described. This occurs in the age
before which the dominion over thoughts passed from the form beings
to the primal beginnings. This is also reflected in the fact that the
ancient “fifth-era,” which preceded the above cosmic
event, passes on to the “era of thirds” and the
experience of major and minor modes.

It
is of special interest regarding man's musical experience to go
back into a still earlier time, an age of human earthly evolution
reaching back into the dimmest primeval past, which can be brought
into view by super-sensible vision. We arrive at an age — you
find it described as the “Lemurian Age” in my
Occult Science
— in which generally man cannot perceive the
musical element that can become conscious in him in an interval
within one octave. In that age, man perceives only an interval that
surpasses one octave:

c d e f g a b c d

He
perceives only the above interval c to d above c1. In the
Lemurian age we discover a musical experience that excludes hearing
any interval within one octave; the interval instead reaches to the
first tone of the following octave. It is difficult to put into words
what the human being experienced then, but perhaps one can form an
idea of it if I say that Lemurian man experienced the second of the
next higher and the third of the second higher octave. He experienced
a kind of objective third, and there he also experienced both major
and minor thirds. It is not a third in our sense, of course, because
one has an actual third only when I take the prime in the same octave
and the tone that I refer to as being the second-nearest to the
prime. Because ancient man was able to experience such intervals,
however — we should say today, prime in the first octave,
second in the next, third in the third octave — he perceived
something like an objective major and minor mode, not one experienced
within himself but one that was felt to be an expression of the soul
experiences of the gods. One cannot say that Lemurians experienced
joy and suffering, exaltation and depression, but one must say that,
due to the particular musical sensation of the Lemurian age, when, in
a completely transported state, human beings perceived these
intervals, they experienced the god's cosmic sounds of joy and
lamentation. We thus can look back upon an epoch of the earth
actually experienced by human beings when what man experiences today
in major and minor modes was projected, so to speak, into the
universe. What today he experiences inwardly was once projected out
into the universe. What today wells up in his life of feeling
[Gemüt], in his sensation, he perceived —
transported from his physical body — as the experience of the
gods. Our present inner experience of a major musical mood was
perceived by Lemurian man, when he was transported from his physical
body, as the cosmic song of jubilation, as the cosmic music of
jubilation, produced by the gods as an expression of joy over their
world creation. What today we know as an inner minor mood experience,
man perceived in the Lemurian age as the overwhelming lamentation of
the gods concerning the possibility that humanity could fall victim
to what subsequently has been described by the Bible as the fall into
sin, the falling away from the benevolent divine-spiritual powers.

This
is something that sounds forth to us from the wonderful knowledge of
the ancient mysteries, which at the same time was in itself artistic;
it is not an abstract description of how humanity once passed through
the Luciferic and Ahrimanic seduction and temptation and experienced
such and such a thing. Human beings actually heard how, in primeval
times, the gods made jubilant music in the cosmos because they
rejoiced over their cosmic creativity. They also heard how the gods
prophetically envisioned man's fall from the divine-spiritual
powers and brought this to expression in their cosmic lamentation.
This knowledge, which later took on increasingly intellectual forms,
resounds as an artistic conception from the ancient mysteries. From
this we can gain the profound conviction that it was only a single
source from which flowed knowledge, art and religion. From this the
conviction must grow in us that we must return to that human soul
composition, and it will arise again if the soul perceives [erkennt],
through the religious welling up in it, the artistic streaming
through it. Such a composition of soul will understand vividly once
again what Goethe meant when he said, “Beauty is a
manifestation of secret natural laws without which these phenomena
would have remained forever hidden.” The secret of human
evolution within earthly existence, within earthly becoming, betrays
itself to us by this inner unity of everything that man, perceiving
religiously and artistically, must go through with the world, so that
along with the world he can experience his entire development.

The
time has come when man must become conscious again of these matters,
because otherwise the soul qualities of human nature will simply
deteriorate. Through the increasingly intellectual, one-sided form of
knowledge, man of today and the immediate future would have to become
arid in his soul; the arts, grown one-sided, would dull his soul; and
the one-sided religion would drain him of his soul altogether, if he
were unable to find the path that could lead him to an inner harmony
and union of these three; if he could not find the way to rise out of
himself — in a more conscious way than was formerly the case —
and once again to see and hear the super-sensible together with the
sense world.

When,
with the air of the science of the spirit, one looks back at the
ancient, great personalities of the dawning Greek culture, whose
descendants were men like Aeschylus or Heraclitus, one finds that, in
so far as they were initiated into the mysteries, these personalities
all had the same feeling born out of their knowledge and their
artistic forces of creativity just as Homer did, who said, “Sing,
O Muse, to me of the wrath of Achilles,” not as something
personal pervading them but as something they accomplished in their
religious experience in community with the spiritual world. It
motivated them to say the following: in primeval times, human beings
actually experienced themselves as human beings by withdrawing from
themselves during their most important human activities — I
explained to you that this was in the case of music, but it was like
this also in forming thoughts — and communing with the gods.
Human beings have lost what they thus experienced. This mood of the
loss of an ancient cognitive, artistic and religious treasure of
humanity weighted heavily on the deeper Greek souls.

Another
mood must come over modern man. By unfolding the appropriate forces
of his soul experience he must reach the point where he rediscovers
what once was lost. I would like to put it like this: man must
develop a consciousness — after all, we live in the age of
consciousness — of how that which has become inward can once
again find the way out to the divine-spiritual. In one realm,
for example, this will be accomplished when the inner wealth of
feeling experienced in a melody one day will be discovered in the
single tone, at which time the secret of individual tone will be
experienced by man. In other words, man not only will experience
intervals but will be able to experience the single tone with the
same inner richness and inner variation of experience that he can
experience today with melody. As yet, today, man can hardly imagine
what this will be like.

You
see, however, how matters proceed from the seventh to the fifth, from
the fifth to the third, and from the third down to the prime, the
single tone, and so forth. What was once the loss of the divine must
transform itself for human evolution if humanity on earth is not to
perish but to continue its development. The loss must transform
itself for earthly humanity into a rediscovery of the divine.

We
understand the past correctly only if we are able to confront it with
the right image for our evolution in the future; if deeply, deeply
shaken we are able to feel what a profound person could feel in
ancient Greek times, “I have lost the presence of the gods”:
if, with a shaken, but intensely and warmly striving soul, we are
able to counter this with the resolve, “We shall bring the
spirit that is within us like a seed to blossoming and fruition so
that we can find the gods once again!”